Webcam + DSLR fusion

[SteveL]

After seeing something vaguely like this somewhere else (and I cannot remember where!), I have been thinking about this for a while now. I find that trying to roughly focus the DSLR to somewhere near the right area a time consuming process... so I thought I`d cheat with the rough focus

After buying a replacement eye cup for my Canon 350D and ripping the rubber strip off it, I glued a spare laptop webcam to it and placed that on the Canon viewfinder.

Yes, the webcam is upside down, but it allows me to see the LCD screen, and there are options in the webcam driver to flip the image. I also need to zoom the image because the viewfinder is small when displayed with the webcam. I havent actually tried this yet in the dark, so the webcam may be utterly Rubbish, but the idea kind of works. I may need to replace the current webcam with a longer exposure model (with lens), but I wont know until I try it out next time its clear and dark.

I`ll still be using DSLFocus for the fine focus, but I`m hoping this will save me some time when I have changed something on the imaging path and need to refocus the whole thing.

[zhgutas]

Nice gimmic steve hope it'll work for u!

[geppetto]

Tried that with a Toucam on the back of a Canon EOS350

some while back.

It worked fine to get sharp focus on the moon but the image

through the viewfinder was a bit too dim for anything else.

Might revisit this and try it with my D40.

Good luck with it, keep us posted